Project 3: Digital Identities and Professional Resumes

My resume is geared towards marketing myself for either an Office Administration or a Public Relations personnel position. I stuck to a strictly traditional sense of what a resume is because I feel like more people would recognize and respect this format more than any other I could do. I did add some color to it; I thought that just plain black and white was too bleak for my taste, so in that sense, I injected a little bit of my personality into the resume. The font is mostly sans-serif, which I think is a clean look, but to keep it from looking informal or bland, I did offset the sans-serif font with my favorite serif font: Bookman Old Style. Separating sections with the colored blocks helped contrast that text against the rest of the body of my resume, too, which I think makes it look more professional.

For my Scannable Resume, I just removed any fancy formatting that might throw a computer scanner off when it goes to review my resume. I did leave the bolding and fonts, though, so it would be much easier for a human reviewer to read once the resume passed the computer scanner phase. It does look a lot cleaner than my actual resume, but it doesn’t look as professional without all of the formatting.

I chose a picture with me making a fun face and wearing a collared shirt because that’s the only relatively decent picture I have of myself wearing “professional” garb. The three sections I added to my profile were: Skills, Volunteer Experience & Causes, and Courses. I chose these sections based on my findings for the Executive Report. This is primarily where the Volunteer Experience & Causes section comes into play, because each person’s profile who works in the PR industry on LinkedIn all stated that they started off in Volunteer work and that it played an important component to their career. I added the Skills section because of the fact that I think it would be important for me to have my skills laid out in key words, much like the scannable resume. If anyone wants to search for someone with the skills that I posted on my profile, they would be able to find it more easily and hopefully select me for a job that much more quickly. Finally, the Courses section was added to show what PR experience I’ve had in the classroom and what those courses entailed so that employers can see that, while I might not have experience out in the “field,” I have taken courses to educate myself about the field and what a job in it entails.

I created this video resume with the hopes to encapsulate who I am and what my qualifications for any job I apply to would be. I’m satisfied with the way that it turned out. I think that the video’s content as far as the pictures are concerned really does justice to the skills from my Executive Report. The “organized” photo not only indicates that I am not only organized, but I love reading and bright colors. The music I selected for the video is really fun and a treat for employers in the video game industry, as it is a piano version of a song from The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker. I think all of the qualities I chose to highlight and the music that was chosen definitely combined to present viewers with an accurate idea of who I am and what I can offer someone as an employee.

I chose these five experiences to kind of backtrack my history of experiences with PR because I feel like my whole life, without even knowing it, I’ve been working this job. In high school, it was my job to get people interested and involved with the Book Fair, as it hadn’t happened there before because of the fact that no one was interested (this would be Dan River High School in Danville). It became wildly popular and it helped our Book Club be able to purchase books for all members to use (as the Library’s property, of course). I put the Bel Air High School node on there to show that, however brief, I have had television exposure. It was fun to go into the studio and see what went into shooting a TV show and being on TV was so much fun. The Cold Stone job didn’t fit onto my actual resume, but I feel like it is important to have on my timeline because it shows that I have always had a strong affinity for working closely with the public and I have the ability to be friendly with anyone and get to know what they like and dislike from a business standpoint. I elaborated on my job as an RA a little bit and briefly convey what aspects of the job I enjoyed and specialized in. Lastly, the Relay For Life PR chair position, to me, is one of the most important nodes I could put on the map because I am actually consciously performing the role of PR practitioner and I am succeeding at it. I’m getting great experience and learning what works for me in this position which, in my opinion, is quite invaluable for any hiree to know before heading into the job.